Compute-optimized instances are ideal for compute-intensive workloads. Compute-optimized instances offer high levels of performance per core and are built on architecture that utilizes features like non-uniform memory access (NUMA) for optimal reliable uniform performance.
| Machine | Workloads |
|---|---|
| C2D machine series |
|
| C2 machine series |
|
The following machine series are available in this machine family:
- C2D instances run on the 3rd-generation AMD EPYC Milan processor and offer up to 3.5 GHz max boost frequency. C2D instances have flexible sizing between 2 to 112 vCPUs and 2 to 8 GB of memory per vCPU.
- C2 instances run on the 2nd-generation Intel Xeon Scalable processor (Cascade Lake) which offers up to 3.9 GHz sustained single-core max turbo frequency. C2 offers instances with 4 to 60 vCPUs and 4 GB of memory per vCPU.
C2D machine series
The C2D machine series provides the largest instance sizes and are best-suited for high performance computing (HPC). The C2D series also has the largest available last-level cache (LLC) cache per core.
The C2D machine series comes in different machine types ranging from 2 to 112 vCPUs, and offer up to 896 GB of memory. You can attach up to 3 TiB of Local SSD storage to these machine types for applications that require higher storage performance.
- C2D standard and C2D high-cpu machines serve existing compute-bound workloads including high-performance web servers, media transcoding, and gaming.
- C2D high-memory machines serve specialized workloads such as HPC and EDA, which need more memory.
The C2D series supports these compute-bound workloads by using the third generation AMD EPYC Milan platform.
The C2D series supports Confidential VM.
C2D Limitations
The C2D machine series has the following restrictions:
- You can't attach regional persistent disks to a C2D instance.
- The C2D machine series is subject to different disk performance limits than the general-purpose and memory-optimized machine families.
- The C2D machine series is available only in select zones and regions on specific CPU processors.
- The C2D machine series doesn't support GPUs.
- The C2D machine series doesn't support sole-tenant nodes.
C2D machine types
C2D instances are available as predefined configurations in sizes ranging from 2 vCPUs to 112 vCPUs and up to 896 GB of memory.
- standard: 4 GB memory per vCPU
- highcpu: 2 GB memory per vCPU
highmem: 8 GB memory per vCPU
C2D standard
| Machine types | vCPUs1 | Memory (GB) | Local SSD2 | Default egress bandwidth (Gbps)3 |
Tier_1 egress bandwidth (Gbps)4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
c2d-standard-2 |
2 | 8 | 1, 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 10 | N/A |
c2d-standard-4 |
4 | 16 | 1, 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 10 | N/A |
c2d-standard-8 |
8 | 32 | 1, 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 16 | N/A |
c2d-standard-16 |
16 | 64 | 1, 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 32 | N/A |
c2d-standard-32 |
32 | 128 | 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 32 | Up to 50 |
c2d-standard-56 |
56 | 224 | 4 or 8 | Up to 32 | Up to 50 |
c2d-standard-112 |
112 | 448 | 8 | Up to 32 | Up to 100 |
1 A vCPU represents a single logical CPU
thread. See CPU platforms.
2 Number of 375 GiB Local SSD disks that you can choose to add
when creating the instance.
3 Default egress bandwidth cannot exceed the number given. Actual
egress bandwidth depends on the destination IP address and other factors.
See Network bandwidth.
4 Supports
high-bandwidth networking for larger machine types. For Windows OS images,
the maximum network bandwidth is limited to 50 Gbps.
C2D high-cpu
| Machine types | vCPUs1 | Memory (GB) | Local SSD2 | Default egress bandwidth (Gbps)3 |
Tier_1 egress bandwidth (Gbps)4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
c2d-highcpu-2 |
2 | 4 | 1, 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 10 | N/A |
c2d-highcpu-4 |
4 | 8 | 1, 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 10 | N/A |
c2d-highcpu-8 |
8 | 16 | 1, 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 16 | N/A |
c2d-highcpu-16 |
16 | 32 | 1, 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 32 | N/A |
c2d-highcpu-32 |
32 | 64 | 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 32 | Up to 50 |
c2d-highcpu-56 |
56 | 112 | 4 or 8 | Up to 32 | Up to 50 |
c2d-highcpu-112 |
112 | 224 | 8 | Up to 32 | Up to 100 |
1 A vCPU represents a single logical CPU
thread. See CPU platforms.
2 Number of 375 GiB Local SSD disks that you can choose to add
when creating the instance.
3 Default egress bandwidth cannot exceed the number given. Actual
egress bandwidth depends on the destination IP address and other factors.
See Network bandwidth.
4 Supports
high-bandwidth networking for larger machine types. For Windows OS images,
the maximum network bandwidth is limited to 50 Gbps.
C2D high-mem
| Machine types | vCPUs1 | Memory (GB) | Local SSD2 | Default egress bandwidth (Gbps)3 |
Tier_1 egress bandwidth (Gbps)4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
c2d-highmem-2 |
2 | 16 | 1, 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 10 | N/A |
c2d-highmem-4 |
4 | 32 | 1, 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 10 | N/A |
c2d-highmem-8 |
8 | 64 | 1, 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 16 | N/A |
c2d-highmem-16 |
16 | 128 | 1, 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 32 | N/A |
c2d-highmem-32 |
32 | 256 | 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 32 | Up to 50 |
c2d-highmem-56 |
56 | 448 | 4 or 8 | Up to 32 | Up to 50 |
c2d-highmem-112 |
112 | 896 | 8 | Up to 32 | Up to 100 |
1 A vCPU represents a single logical CPU
thread. See CPU platforms.
2 Number of 375 GiB Local SSD disks that you can choose to add
when creating the instance.
3 Default egress bandwidth cannot exceed the number given. Actual
egress bandwidth depends on the destination IP address and other factors.
See Network bandwidth.
4 Supports
high-bandwidth networking for larger machine types. For Windows OS images,
the maximum network bandwidth is limited to 50 Gbps.
Supported disk types for C2D
C2D instances can use the following block storage types:
- Standard Persistent Disk (
pd-standard) - Balanced Persistent Disk (
pd-balanced) - SSD (performance) Persistent Disk (
pd-ssd)
Each C2D instance can have a maximum of 128 Persistent Disk volumes (including the boot disk) attached to the instance, and a total of 257 GiB disk capacity.
C2D instances with Confidential Computing running Microsoft Windows with the NVMe disk interface have a disk attachment limitation of 16 disks. See Known issues for details.
Network support for C2D instances
The C2D machine types support either the VirtIO or gVNIC network driver. C2D instances with 32 or more vCPUS support higher network bandwidths of 50 Gbps and 100 Gbps with gVNIC and per VM Tier_1 networking performance.
Maintenance experience for C2D instances
During the lifecycle of a Compute Engine instance, the host machine that your instance runs on undergoes multiple host events. A host event can include the regular maintenance of Compute Engine infrastructure, or in rare cases, a host error. Compute Engine also applies some non-disruptive lightweight upgrades for the hypervisor and network in the background.
The C2D machine series offers the following features related to host maintenance:
| Machine type | Typical scheduled maintenance event frequency | Maintenance behavior | Advanced notification | On-demand maintenance | Simulate maintenance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All machine types | Minimum of 30 days | Live migrate | 60 seconds | No | Yes |
| Confidential VM | Minimum of 30 days | Restart in place | 60 seconds | No | Yes |
The maintenance frequencies shown in the previous table are approximations, not guarantees. Compute Engine might occasionally perform maintenance more frequently.
C2 machine series
The C2 machine series provides full transparency into the architecture of the underlying server platforms, letting you fine-tune the performance. Machine types in this series offer much more computing power, and are generally more robust for compute-intensive workloads compared to N1 high-CPU machine types.
The C2 series comes in different machine types ranging from 4 to 60 vCPUs, and offers up to 240 GB of memory. You can attach up to 3 TiB of Local SSD storage to these instances for applications that require higher storage performance.
This series also produces a greater than 40% performance improvement compared to the previous generation N1 machines and offer higher performance per thread and isolation for latency-sensitive workloads.
The C2 series enables the highest performance per core and the highest frequency for compute-bound workloads using Intel 3.9 GHz Cascade Lake processors. If you are looking to optimize workloads for single thread performance, particularly with respect to floating point, choose a machine type in this series to take advantage of AVX-512 capabilities only available on Intel.
C2 Limitations
The C2 machine series has the following restrictions:
- You cannot use regional persistent disks.
- The C2 machine series is subject to different disk limits than the general-purpose and memory-optimized machine families.
- The C2 machine series is available only in select zones and regions on specific CPU processors.
- The C2 machine series doesn't support GPUs.
C2 machine types
C2 instances are available as predefined configurations with 4 to 60 vCPUs and 4 GB memory per vCPU.
| Machine types | vCPUs1 | Memory (GB) | Local SSD2 | Default egress bandwidth (Gbps)3 |
Tier_1 egress bandwidth (Gbps)4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
c2-standard-4 |
4 | 16 | 1, 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 10 | N/A |
c2-standard-8 |
8 | 32 | 1, 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 16 | N/A |
c2-standard-16 |
16 | 64 | 2, 4, or 8 | Up to 32 | N/A |
c2-standard-30 |
30 | 120 | 4 or 8 | Up to 32 | Up to 50 |
c2-standard-60 |
60 | 240 | 8 | Up to 32 | Up to 100 |
1 A vCPU represents a single logical CPU
thread. See CPU platforms.
2 Number of 375 GiB Local SSD disks that you can choose to add
when creating the instance.
3 Default egress bandwidth cannot exceed the number given. Actual
egress bandwidth depends on the destination IP address and other factors.
See Network bandwidth.
4 Supports
high-bandwidth networking for larger machine types. For Windows OS images,
the maximum network bandwidth is limited to 50 Gbps.
Supported disk types for C2
C2 instances can use the following block storage types:
- Standard Persistent Disk (
pd-standard) - Balanced Persistent Disk (
pd-balanced) - SSD (performance) Persistent Disk (
pd-ssd)
Each C2 instance can have a maximum of 128 Persistent Disk volumes (including the boot disk) attached to the instance, and a total of 257 GiB disk capacity.
Network support for C2 instances
The C2 machine types support either the VirtIO or gVNIC network driver. C2 instances with 30 or more vCPUS support higher network bandwidths of 50 Gbps and 100 Gbps with gVNIC and per VM Tier_1 networking performance.
Maintenance experience for C2 instances
During the lifecycle of a Compute Engine instance, the host machine that your instance runs on undergoes multiple host events. A host event can include the regular maintenance of Compute Engine infrastructure, or in rare cases, a host error. Compute Engine also applies some non-disruptive lightweight upgrades for the hypervisor and network in the background.
The C2 machine series offers the following features related to host maintenance:
| Machine type | Typical scheduled maintenance event frequency | Maintenance behavior | Advanced notification | On-demand maintenance | Simulate maintenance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| All machine types | Minimum of 30 days | Live migrate | 60 seconds | No | Yes |
| Confidential VM | Minimum of 30 days | Restart in place | 60 seconds | No | Yes |
| Sole tenant node VMs | 4 to 6 weeks | Live migrate, restart in place, or migrate with a node group | none | No | Yes |
The maintenance frequencies shown in the previous table are approximations, not guarantees. Compute Engine might occasionally perform maintenance more frequently.
What's next
- Learn about the HPC-optimized machine family.
- Create an instance.
- Review Compute Engine instance pricing.
- Configure an instance with a high-bandwidth network.